Hate-filled letters to Queens lawmaker claim to have anti-immigration moles all over city government

Assemblyman Francisco Moya, D-Jackson Heights, center, speaks about proposed legislation on immigration reform as other Assembly members listen during a news conference at the Capitol in 2017. (Hans Pennink / AP)

A Queens lawmaker has been hit with hate mail from a writer who claims to have anti-immigration moles in the top echelons of city government.

City Councilman Francisco Moya’s district headquarters in Corona and office in City Hall have received approximately 10 anonymous letters from a person identifying as a member of a new anti-immigrant group calling themselves “The Notre Dame Society.”

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The writer boasts the secret group is assisting U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents as vigilantes in sanctuary cities. The group’s moniker is an ironic reference to “The Hunchback of Notre Dame,” in which Quasimodo shouts, “Sanctuary, Sanctuary!”

The NYPD is investigating.

"It's unclear if this person is telling the truth about their anti-immigrant vigilante hate group or if the writer is just a dedicated troll but I am certain about one thing: This display of nationalism is not patriotism,” Moya said. “It's naked xenophobia. It's fear masquerading as intimidation. And I will not be cowed by them.”

Moya believes the letters are a response to an editorial he wrote in the Daily News in May slamming a racist lawyer who threatened to call federal immigration officials on Spanish-speaking workers.

In the piece, Moya condemned attorney Aaron Schlossberg after he was caught on a cell phone video spewing hate inside a Midtown restaurant in May.

“You have now been exposed,” Moya wrote, referring to Schlossberg. “You are a meme, a Reddit thread. You and your camp may think you have renewed license to spew ignorance in public, but the rest of us see that behavior for what it is: Not an expression of power but the dying spasm of a depraved ideology.”

As for the letters, the writer — who does not leave a return address — says the so-called vigilantes call themselves Knights. Moya’s office believes that may be a reference to the White Knights of the KKK.

The missives initially claimed its New York chapter had 26 members “and still growing,” including “at least two Knights in the court system of NYCity” and three in Long Island courts. The writer also claims to have nine more members in a Boston chapter.

More recently, the writer said the group has “67 Knights on the street in New York…21 Boston…16 Long Island…New Jersey 14…Upstate 10.

“We now have a direct association with ICE,” the letter claimed. “Yes we have a liaison rep with them.”

The letter writer also claims to have lawyers and cops in their ranks, as well as “a well-placed mole in City Hall,” which the writer calls “our secret weapon.”

Moya said he was reluctant to give the unhinged writer any publicity.

"I don't want to give the author any more attention than I have to. However, if there are anti-immigrant vigilantes in City Hall and the courts, they need to be identified and dealt with accordingly."